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Why good parenting is like gardening

6 am: Jesus turned water to wine, but equally miraculously I have managed to turn all the wine I have chugged over the holidays straight to adipose tissue, which is the primary reason why I am picking at my boiled egg and morosely writing down my weight in a bright yellow diary. Emblazoned across its cover are the words `Eat Drink Enjoy!’ and below that in bold, ‘Oh Shut up Fatty!’ Two sentences that pretty much sum up my existential crisis since the age of seven.

The man of the house, wolfing down his lavish breakfast of eggs and oats, pauses mid bite to ask me if I have tried out the generous gift that he brought home yesterday -the ‘My Weigh Xl-700 Talking Bathroom Scale’. ‘ You know it tells you your weight in four different languages,’ he adds. I ask him what made him choose such a unique gift, and he beams, ‘ I am just trying to help you. You weigh yourself everyday na, keep peering at the number and complaining that the scale isn’t working properly so I thought you could use a new one.This way you don’t ever have to put on your spectacles!’ ‘I don’t have spectacles,’ I screech. He replies, `You don’t have glasses now na baby but this scale has a 30-year warranty so over the years you will get glasses for sure, then toh you will be thanking me everyday .’ And as I struggle for a comeback, he peers at me and says, ‘Err, I think you have egg on your face.’ and leaves for work.

7 am: Walking on the beach with a friend to jiggle away some lard, I recount the time I would run up and down this stretch with a stick in my hand to hit the strange men who would try to bump into me as I went by . We start talking about the mass molestation in Bengaluru, and my furious friend says, ‘I don’t know a single woman who has not been groped and grabbed. We have all at some point rushed home, our minds in turmoil and our skin crawling, to jump into the shower and scrub and scrub hoping that we will feel clean again someday if not today! There is something inherently wrong in the way these men were raised, what the hell did their parents teach them?’ I sigh, ‘Isn’t it odd that people have to train, give a test and get a license before they can guide a vehicle down the street but there is no preparation or test to check if you are capable of guiding a human being down the right path in life?

Bas, being a good parent seems to mean making sure you have enough aloo parathas to fill your child’s stomach. What about filling their heads with the right ideas? Don’t we have to keep an eye on their minds as carefully as we do on their grades, nip some thoughts in the bud, and let others flourish?’ She snorts, ‘Arrey , are you talking about parenting or gardening?’ I reply, ‘I never thought of it like that but yes, the principle seems to be the same. If you want a rose bush to flourish, then trimming is important otherwise all you will grow is a shrub full of thorns. In our country we only prune our daughters, sometimes so severely that they shrivel up completely , but we refuse to see our sons’ faults. How many times do we make excuses like, `Boys are like this only’ or ‘He will grow out of it’, and just like the blind king Dhritarashtra and his blindfolded queen Gandhari, we all go forth and produce hundreds of unworthy sons and unleash them onto the world.’

2 pm: I am sitting with mother at the candle factory , my morning conversation still whirling in my head, I ask her, ‘Mom what is the most important thing you did as a parent ? Would you have raised me differently if I was a boy?’ She laughs, ‘I tried to set a good example that’s all. And if you were a boy the only thing I would have done differently would be to let you grow your moustache to its full glory , it was so cute!’, and she goes back to checking the fragrance mixtures.

Needing to send a few emails, I realize that I can’t log onto the factory’s Wi-Fi so I interrupt her again, ‘Mom did you change the password today?’ She nods and says, ‘I don’t remember!’ I ask incredulously , `You don’t remember?’ She replies, ‘No, you idiot, the password’s “idontremember“ with no apostrophes and all small letters’ and starts cackling till she gets a stitch in her stomach.

I guess she did set a good example in many ways, not the least being how to keep yourself amused at all times. So now I know where I get my dubious wisecracking ways, like the will.i.am song goes, `I got it from my mama’.

Illustration: Chad Crowe

5 pm: The prodigal son is home from school, he looks at me sitting at my desk in a pink salwar kameez and asks, ‘Why are you all dressed up, is it a festival or something?’ I reply , ‘I have decided that I am just going to wear salwar kameezes for a while as they are aligned with my Gandhian principles of forgiveness.’ He looks bewildered, `Mom, what does this to do with clothes?’ and I say , `Well, you see salwars are forgiving in nature while jeans know how to hold a grudge!’ `Mom, stop all this phony stuff and just admit it, your jeans are not fitting you anymore, right?’ He laughs as he parks himself beside me. I share an apple with him and then tell him what’s really weighing on my mind, and it’s not the kilos. `There is a reason why touching objects and people in a way that causes damage is called manhandle and not womanhandle.’ We talk about a false sense of entitlement, subliminal privilege and respect. I watch him as he talks, my little boy who now towers over me, worrying if I am setting a good enough example because children learn by watching what we do as much as by listening to what we say . I help him tidy his mind just the way I help him tidy his cupboard. And I wait.Because only time will tell if I succeeded in raising a decent human being, if I managed to be the clear sighted gardener or did I fail him by being a blinded-by-love queen.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

Author

Twinkle Khanna aka Mrs Funnybones crafts satirical stories and funny fables when she is not running a design business, selling candles or running in circles around her small but rather odd family. She narrowly escaped a gruesome tragedy when Bollywood tried to bludgeon her brain to the size of a pea, but she ducked at the right moment and escaped miraculously unharmed; she is now a popular columnist as well and is currently in the process of creating lame jokes like ' Why do all Hindu boys worship their mother? Because their religion tells them to worship the cow.' She firmly believes that nothing in life is sacred except laughter. (Not even her name, which she is secretly trying to change to Chetali Bhagat so that her columns get made into movies.)

Author

Twinkle Khanna aka Mrs Funnybones crafts satirical stories and funny fables when she is not running a design business, selling candles or running in circles around her small but rather odd family. She narrowly escaped a gruesome tragedy when Bollywood tried to bludgeon her brain to the size of a pea, but she ducked at the right moment and escaped miraculously unharmed; she is now a popular columnist as well and is currently in the process of creating lame jokes like ' Why do all Hindu boys worship their mother? Because their religion tells them to worship the cow.' She firmly believes that nothing in life is sacred except laughter. (Not even her name, which she is secretly trying to change to Chetali Bhagat so that her columns get made into movies.)